Tarter, Jill Cornell (1944–)

Jill Tarter is science team leader at the SETI Institute,
holder of the Institute's Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI,
and Director of Project Phoenix. Tarter
received a B.S. in engineering physics from Cornell
University (1965), and M.S. (1971) and Ph.D. (1975) in theoretical astrophysics
from the University of California, Berkeley where, as a graduate student, she carried out work on Project SERENDIP.
From 1975–77 she held a postdoctoral National Research Council Fellowship
at NASA Ames Research Center and was subsequently
contracted to work on NASA's High Resolution Microwave
Survey. She has been on the staff at Berkeley since 1977 and a principal
investigator for the SETI Institute since 1985. Together with Margaret Turnbull,
she recently compiled HabCat (Catalog of
Nearby Habitable Systems) to help guide future SETI research, notably that
to be conducted using the Allen Telescope Array.
Tarter is married to another leading SETI investigator, William ("Jack") Welch.